


The End of the Line

by asilentherald



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arthur Returns, M/M, Modern Era, Post-Finale, Winter Soldier AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 19:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1700201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asilentherald/pseuds/asilentherald
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things don’t go as planned – in which the High Priestesses in Avalon screw with destiny and twist it beyond recognition while Merlin rests, producing a brainwashed killing machine with golden hair and a metal arm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [achillese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/achillese/gifts).



Merlin whittles away the years until they’re just fragments of woodcarvings being blown away by the damp wind. He wanders away from Avalon every now and then, but after a hundred – or two or three – years, he realizes he’s in for a long wait. Merlin seeks out the counsel of the druids, but they’ve all but vanished in the centuries following the arrival of the Saxons. Then, when the religion from the Vatican city-state returns to England, Merlin consults the earth – specifically, he goes to the Crystal Cave.

He sees years of difficulty and strife for people like him in every version of the future. He sees magic slowly fade from the land. He never sees Arthur. He never looks far enough ahead, and he doesn’t want to risk going too far. The crystals there always made Merlin nervous.

The earth invites him in, promising to wake him when the time comes. Merlin is tired, so he accepts. The earth folds in around him, like his mother tucking him in when he was very young. He gets to help the earth like this and keep its magic from dying out while he’s there. They’ll both be better prepared for what’s coming – at least, this is what Merlin assumes as he closes his eyes.

But things simply don’t go as planned.

* * *

Arthur rouses on the bed of wood as the boat hits the shore. He sits up, breathing in the sweet air hungrily. He feels lightheaded and deprived, like he’s been underwater for a very long time. Arthur climbs out of the boat on wobbly legs and falls onto the sand. He hardly has the energy to lift Excalibur, so he sets it down beside him and gazes out at the shore.

The ground shifts and a woman grows out of the dirt behind him. Arthur doesn’t see her reach with her pale, pale hand and steal Excalibur away from his side. Her eyes are dark with anger but they’re tired. She presses the blade to Arthur’s neck. He slowly rises. She stays behind him.

Arthur can’t do anything but go where the woman leads him through the gentle, milky breeze further up the hill. The fog lifts and Arthur finds himself facing a few familiar faces – Nimueh and Morgause.

“We’re glad you’ve joined us,” Nimueh says with a slow, cherry-red smile. Sharp fingers grip Arthur’s shoulder. He tries to turn to see who’s behind him, but it’s fairly obvious now.

Morgana steps around to face him, the sword never leaving his neck. She looks just as she did on the hill where Merlin killed her.

His chest aches at the very thought of Merlin.

“I told you I wouldn’t let you die alone, brother,” she says softly. “We have you now.”

“I’m not yours,” Arthur says, his voice coming out low and scratchy.

“You are now,” Morgause says. “We have plans for you.”

There’s a brief struggle in which Arthur tries to run but his legs don’t move right in Avalon. Morgause and Nimueh are in their element; they’ve had time to learn the ways of the dead. Morgana is as inexperienced as him, but she’s still a high priestess.

She grips his arm and brings Excalibur down on him. The cut is clean, but it _hurts_ as it would have hurt in life, only the blood loss doesn’t numb him or knock him out. Arthur cries out, reduced to his knees, cradling his stump of an arm, unable to let go of the pain. He gasps for that sugar sweet air, but it intoxicates him. Morgana, Morgause, and Nimueh loom over him.

“We’ll manage,” Morgause assures Morgana. Nimueh touches Arthur’s head and finally he falls into unbalanced asleep.

* * *

Merlin’s barely dozing when he feels the subtle shift in the fabric of the earth, but it’s too late to turn back. The earth doesn’t protest just yet, so he keeps sinking down closer to his well-deserved rest.

* * *

When he wakes next, he’s tied to a chair with bindings around his chest, head, legs, and arm. He looks down on his left and stares at the space where there ought to be a limb. He can almost feel it, but it’s clearly a phantom or a trick. He blinks slowly as the door opens. His eyes hurt.

“Tell me who you are,” the dark-haired woman asks. She sets her cerulean blue eyes on him and sits on a stool he conjures out the air.

“I… don’t know,” he says hoarsely.

“You’re a soldier.”

“Yes.”

“We will train you. You’re going to help us make things right.”

The door opens and two more women enter. One is blonde and intense while the other is dark-haired and has an unreadable look on her face.

“Well?” the blonde asks.

“It’s working,” says the first woman, looking back over her shoulder. “We’ll have to do something about the arm.”

“We’ve got it covered,” the second dark-haired woman says.

She’s at his side a moment later, covering his eyes with her cool hand. He loses consciousness for some time. When he rouses, he instinctively raises his arms to scrub sleep out of his eyes. Something catches the light. He looks his left and finds a gleaming metal arm has replaced the one he last woke without. He flexes his hand and finds it works just as well as his right, the intricate plates of metal shifting like muscles. His body tingles with every movement of this sleek new arm. He feels it all the way down to his fingertips.

He feels whole in a way he didn’t the last time he woke.

The door opens and the three women file in.

“Shall we begin?”

* * *

The disturbance jars Merlin out of his rest violently. The earth vomits him onto the floor of the crystal cave. When his head clears, Merlin can see the lights of the crystals flickering violently and rapidly dimming. Panic strikes him at the core. He can feel that something is very wrong.

He looks into the nearest crystal and sees what has become of the world, full of metal and tall structures; Merlin’s watched its progress while he’s slept. He knows very well how the world has changed. What he doesn’t expect to see is a man with a metal arm wreaking havoc on the streets of London, tearing into cars and destroying buildings not with devices of modern warfare but with _magic_. His face is covered, hidden behind a mask and goggles and long yellow hair.

Merlin sighs and makes his way out of the cave.

He stops in Glastonbury to purchase some modern attire and sees the news report on the television in a shop window. They call the events “gas explosions” or “fundamental structural malfunctions” but it’s clear they just don’t know who the man with the metal arm is or his motive.

Merlin hopes this is it – that this man will be enough of a threat to Albion to raise Arthur from the dead and end Merlin’s waiting after centuries of injustice, inequality, and incredible, inordinate violence between people more fundamentally similar than Merlin and his king. But Avalon was calm as ever as he passed it on the way to Glastonbury, though.

He bites his tongue and forces his eyes shut, resting his head against the cool glass of the bus. He listens to the rain rap against the window and steels himself for whatever awaits in London.

When he gets off the bus, the man is there outside Victoria Station, practically waiting for him with open arms. Merlin pulls the hood of his jacket over his head. He can feel magic surging through the other man’s body, all of it originating in that metal arm. It looks like it’s fashioned from old armor from the days of Camelot, complete with the same decorative carvings.

The man, who’s been assessing the area with clinical concentration, finally sets his black gaze on Merlin. He immediately raises his arm and a blast of magic shoots at him. Merlin barely dives out of the way in time. The blast leaves a long black scorch mark in the street. He shouts at the people on the sidewalk to get away, the din of their panicked screaming ringing in his ears. They scramble. Merlin looks back only once all the bystanders have disappeared, leaving the stage to Merlin and the man with the metal arm.

They meet halfway.

 _He’s strong_ , Merlin admits as he spits out a mouthful of blood, panting. The man’s goggles are on the ground. Merlin sees bright blue eyes that would be painfully familiar but for the lack of emotion, the utter hardness and lack of humanity behind them. There’s plenty of willpower, but Merlin can feel it’s not the man’s own. He’s more of a machine than the metal arm lets on.

He almost feels bad for him – until he strikes Merlin _hard_ with the metal arm, sending him flying backward. He cushions his fall with his magic and the man tackles him head-on. They tangle on the ground, the man resorting to knives in his belt, but Merlin’s fast and his magic is still stronger than whatever is powering the man’s arm. He can feel it’s not the man’s own magic either. He raises his arm to strike. Merlin throws up a shield. The man punches at the barrier and they freeze, two almost equal forces firing at each other, until they’re both thrown back, repulsed by the sheer power dissipated between them. Merlin catches the man’s eye and sees nothing – no surprise, no emotion, only fierce determination fixated on Merlin.

Merlin crawls out from under the rubble and barely deflects another shot. He hits the ground hard and sends out a wave of magic strong enough to knock the man off balance and tumbling onto the sidewalk. Merlin takes his chance and before long he manages to pin the man back against a car. The man pulls himself out of the wreckage before Merlin can get to him. Merlin releases one powerful wave of magic, sending the man flying backward into the middle of the dusty street. He tumbles and rolls deftly; his mask falls away. The man stands and looks at Merlin.

The rain literally halts around them. Merlin can’t seem to breathe.

“Arthur?” he says. It’s the only word he knows in that moment.

The man with the metal arm – god, _Arthur_ – doesn’t react immediately. He doesn’t blink or laugh and say it’s all a cruel, cruel joke. He doesn’t even rage at him and tell him he’s a changed man. He stares at Merlin blankly and asks,

“Who the hell is Arthur?”

He’s gone before Merlin even realizes that the Met have arrived and clapped him in cuffs.

* * *

“The man on the street,” he says as they lock him into place. “I knew him.”

Morgause tightens the straps. Morgana is on the stool regarding him coldly as ever.

“He is your mission,” she says.

“But I knew him,” he says with a tremulous voice.

The encounter unsettled him. It’s as though the man pulled at a string in Arthur’s head just enough to loosen whatever door to which it’s attached. It’s not jammed so tightly shut anymore because of the man on the street. He never knew that door was even there or there was anything hidden. He knows what the Priestesses tell him – they give him his missions, dictate who his targets are, and he’s adept at following those orders. He’s built for the work he does for them. They made him strong. His metal fingers curl at the thought.

But the man on the street changed him.

Morgana looks up at Morgause.

“Should we put him away for a while?” she asks. “We might do well to deal with Emrys ourselves.”

“It’s been too long,” Morgause replies.

He feels a surge of hatred. Normally such sensations don’t surface. They stay under the metal, under the armor they place on him. His dry eyes prickle and sting. Morgana frowns.

“Fine,” she says. “Wipe him.”

She stands and leaves the room. Morgause feeds a leather strap between his teeth. He channels every loathsome feeling he suddenly feels at her, biting down hard without looking away from Morgause. She tightly brackets his head with her hands from behind.

He braces himself, but he still screams until he has no voice whatsoever, no awareness outside of the magic coursing through his brain and storing in his metal arm.

* * *

Merlin barely gets away from the Met. He’s in too much shock to break away while they’re still on the streets. Cameras catch them shoving him into their van. When they’re out of central London, surely driving out to either kill him or test him – Merlin knows magic isn’t exactly a common or believable thing these days – Merlin strikes fast. He doesn’t kill them, but he incapacitates them enough to have sufficient time to get back to Avalon. Only once he’s on the familiar shore can he sit down and try to make sense of what’s happened.

Arthur is back. Merlin saw with his own eyes the spitting image of Arthur Pendragon, but the dead eyes, the unrelenting attitude, the _magic_ – it’s all so wrong. Yet Merlin knows in his heart it’s him, it’s _his Arthur_ , and something truly horrible has happened in the last thousand years or so.

Not for the first time, Merlin wishes he wasn’t the only person who survived this long.

Merlin spends three days sitting in the cold on the sand. When the tide rises to touch his feet, Merlin stands. He changes into his old clothes, tattered from years of service in Camelot. He feels like he’s put on old skin and it fits him like new. Merlin walks out into the lake, the water chilling him to the core; he swims to the distant shore of the Isle of Avalon, passing through wave after wave of protective magic. He peels through them until he reaches the pit, the isle, the core of it all, broken by tendrils of darkness digging deep into the earth. Merlin shudders. _This_ is why the earth woke him – because it was being invaded.

He dries off and walks to the tower. Merlin is about to simply open the door and see what he finds when he’s blown aside by a powerful blast of magic. He lies flat on his back, coughing, struggling to breathe with the pain in his chest.

He opens his eyes to see Arthur, dead-eyed and determined, standing over him. He grabs Merlin by the front of his shirt and throws him at the wall of the tower like he’s nothing more than a rag with that magical metal arm. Merlin feels bones crack on impact. Blood rolls down the back of his neck from somewhere beyond his hairline. He blearily looks around and finds himself face to face with that metal arm closing in on him. He grabs at it and uses all his magic to move it and crush it. Arthur cries out and starts to bend. Merlin slams him onto his back, dislocating Arthur’s good shoulder in the process. He yelps pain and it shakes Merlin to the core.

“I’m not going to fight you,” he says after a moment of catching his breath. He releases Arthur’s arm and steps back. Arthur is back on his feet, holding his good arm with this damaged metal one, stalking up to Merlin.

“Why not?” he demands.

“Because you’re my friend.”

Arthur strikes him. Merlin lands on his hands and knees, blood dribbling out of his mouth messily. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and looks up.

“Your name is Arthur Pendragon. You are the Once and Future King. You are the greatest man I’ve ever known, and you’re my _friend_.”

He kicks him just under the ribs, knocking all the wind out of him. He kicks him again and rolls him onto his back. Arthur drops to his knees and straddles him. He winds up and punches him four times with the metal arm before loosing a cry of frustration.

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” Merlin says. He smiles wearily at Arthur, happy at least to see a ghost of his friend’s face through his swollen eyes.

“What are you waiting for?” a familiar voice screeches. Merlin cranes his neck and sees Morgana sweeping up to them. In a rush of energy he _pushes_ Arthur away and meets Morgana in the middle.

“You’ve done this,” he says.

“Yes,” she hisses, “and it’s paid off.”

Suddenly there’s a huge arm around his neck squeezing him tightly enough to lift Merlin off the ground. He scratches at the metal desperately, but Arthur holds him unrelentingly. Morgana’s fingers trace his cheek.

“Why have you done this?” he croaks. Arthur squeezes more tightly.

“To destroy you,” she replies. “As I said, it’s paying off.”

“And Arthur? Why did you do this to him?”

“To _destroy_ you.”

Morgana walks away and slowly sinks into the ground, the black earth swallowing her whole.

Arthur slams him on the ground, his metal hand crushing Merlin’s throat. It would be so easy for him to just rip him apart. Merlin can feel the power in the arm, coming straight from Morgana and whoever else is on her side. But Merlin is still stronger. He digs one hand into the dirt and pushes his magic into the Isle. The ground tremors violently, almost unbalancing Arthur from where he kneels frozen over Merlin.

“What are you doing?” he asks. He almost sounds curious.

“Trying to fix this,” he gasps. The hand tightens a fraction. Merlin releases the final push of magic. He can hear their screams deep in the earth where their beloved Avalon is turning on the Priestesses and stripping them out of their bodies, returning their magic to the land. Merlin feels the evil in them bleed through the ground up to the surface, rising like an ordinary fog.

Merlin relaxes when the fog settles and hangs around them lightly. Merlin looks up at Arthur, desperately hopeful, but there’s not a glimmer of recognition or softness in his eyes. He tightens his grip on Merlin’s neck. Spots swim before his eyes. He’s so suddenly exhausted, so much of his energy having gone to purifying all of Avalon of the Priestesses’ presence. He _can’t_ fight Arthur off now. He can feel consciousness slipping, the earth begging to take him home.

* * *

The hand tightens on his sinewy neck. He settles his weight like a slab of stone on the man’s body.

“You’re my friend,” the man breathes. 

“You’re my mission,” he snarls.

He’s angry. He’s irate, but he’s horribly, horribly confused to the point of pain surging from his arm to his head.

Morgana and the others are gone.

The man is watching him with a tentative smile on his face, his blue eyes pulling on a string, that scarlet string in his mind attached to the door that’s abruptly reappeared. He starts to remember that moment of recognition when they first met on the street not so long ago. Magic surges in the arm and sputters out. By the time he knows what’s happened, the man’s eyes are fluttering shut, blood staining his full pink lips.

He starts to stand and back away, but the man’s hand, feather-light and paper-thin, catches his left arm. His magic touches him, cutting through that of the Priestesses like a gust of clean air. He looks down. The man is so pale, his red lips parted and relaxed.

“Stay with me,” he begs. The man’s eyes open sluggishly and meet his own with great effort. His eyes go wide as the man _tugs_ on the thread in his head. “Please, stay this time, Arthur.”

He wants to tell the man that’s not his name. He wants to scream it, but somehow he knows there’s a chance in a million he could be wrong. He doesn’t know his name. He doesn’t know who he is, all of a sudden, with the Priestesses’ magic ebbing away, his left shoulder sagging by the weight of his arm and his sudden, maddening freedom.

The man’s eyes shut. His neck relaxes. His hair mingles with the bright green grass around him as his head lolls to the side.

He scoops the man up and carries him to the water. Somehow, he knows it’s the right thing to do. He lowers the man into the water, his slender white fingers sinking slowly below the surface. He sits beside him, watches the color leave him and the tide rise to meet them.

“Arthur,” he says, testing the name on his tongue. It feels good. He rolls his shoulder and pleasant sparks of magic flood into his body with the movement. He looks down at the man, the water lapping at his dark hair.

He’s not sure why he’s doing this. He’s not sure why the man is so different from the Priestesses and everyone he’s ever encountered. The man was his mission, and yet he couldn’t just leave him. There is something there, something about him – the man who made him feel different – that sticks to him and clings insistently. He can’t put his finger on it, but for whatever reason, he can’t lose him.

So he stays with him.


End file.
